The San Luis Rey Bridge (2004)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The San Luis Rey Bridge |
| Original title | The Bridge of San Luis Rey El puente de San Luis Rey Le pont du roi Saint-Louis |
| Country of production | United Kingdom , Spain , France |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2004 |
| length | 115-120 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mary McGuckian |
| script | Mary McGuckian |
| production |
Michael Cowan , Samuel Hadida , Garrett McGuckian , Mary McGuckian , Denise O'Dell , Elvira Bolz, Jason Piette |
| music | Lalo Schifrin |
| camera | Javier Aguirresarobe |
| cut | Kant Pan |
| occupation | |
| |
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (original title: The Bridge of San Luis Rey ) is a British - Spanish - French film drama from 2004. Directed by Mary McGuckian , who based the screenplay based on the novel of the same name filmed in 1929 and 1944 by Thornton Wilder wrote and co-produced the film. Wilder's Pulitzer Prize- winning novel was first published in New York in 1927. The leading roles in the film are cast with Gabriel Byrne , F. Murray Abraham , Kathy Bates , Robert De Niro , Harvey Keitel , Geraldine Chaplin and Émilie Dequenne .
action
Peru at the beginning of the 18th century: An accident occurs on an Inca rope bridge that has been hanging over a ravine since time immemorial, in which five people die. Brother Juniper, a Franciscan who wanted to cross the bridge himself just a few minutes later, wonders why it was these five victims who tore the suspension bridge down. Because if the accident had happened a little later or earlier, it would have hit others. Was it Divine Providence, should it be exactly these five people?
Over the next six years, in an attempt to fathom the meaning of what happened, Brother Juniper does meticulous research into the people whose lives came to such a tragic end on that bridge at San Luis Rey. He wants to find out whether the deaths of different people are related to how they led their lives. His investigations revolve around the central question of whether a higher meaning can be recognized in the death of these people. He conscientiously confides the results of his investigations in a book. The conclusions he draws are not particularly valued by the ecclesiastical authorities, especially not by the Archbishop of Lima. Brother Juniper is charged with heresy and brought to justice. During the duration of the proceedings, he tells about the victims and lets everyone see stages in their lives.
There is, on the one hand, the aging eccentric Doña Maria, the Marquesa of Montemayor, who idolizes her beautiful daughter Clara and who had planned a marriage for her with the Viceroy of Peru. However, Clara has fled from her possessive mother and such a connection and does not answer the letters her mother wrote to her every day. The abbess is aware that Clara, who fled to Spain, married a young nobleman there. The Archbishop then referred the Marquesa to the Society of Pepita, a young woman who had previously lived in the abbess's monastery.
Other characters in this drama are the kind-hearted Uncle Pio and his protégé, the former street child Camila Villegas, who would love to become an actress. Although the Viceroy of Peru falls in love with her and encourages her, she sleeps with the bullfighter Manuel, whom she in turn loves. However, she has difficulties with his brother Esteban, who is not particularly fond of her. Since Manuel has been away for a long time, Camila finally gets involved with the viceroy and has a son from him. She later fell ill with smallpox and retired to the mountains.
On this fateful day, which in retrospect should also end the life of brother Juniper, in addition to Marquesa, Pepita and Esteban, Uncle Pio and little Jaime, Camila's son, also step on the bridge. These five people fall into the depths. Brother Juniper's sobering realization is that fate must have struck blind. At the end of the trial, the verdict against Brother Juniper, who will be burned at the stake along with the knowledge he has gathered.
production
Production notes
The film was shot in Málaga and Toledo ( Spain ). Its production amounted to an estimated 24 million US dollars . It was produced by Tribeca / Metropolitain, Davis-Films, Bridge, Kanzaman, Spice Factory and Pembridge. The Spanish film architect and Oscar winner Gil Parrondo worked on the film.
Irish director and playwright Mary McGluckin made her feature film debut with this film.
template
There were some deviations from Wilder's novel, which Time Magazine ranks in the Top 100 English Language Novels published between 1913 and 2005. According to Wilder, he used the one-act drama Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée as a model, which also focuses on the central philosophical question of whether our life and death are determined by fate or by chance. Can you subsequently find an explanation for whether something was predetermined, or does our life begin and end in absolute non-commitment? Brother Juniper tries to fathom this by asking himself whether there is a God who decides our life path, or whether our life takes place independently of someone who is superior to us.
Ultimately, Brother Juniper has to admit that he has not been able to prove that there is a supernatural order. The résumés of the five casualties partly overlap, but each form an independent whole. The fact that they ceased to exist almost at the same moment is probably due to chance.
The original and the film have two historical personalities integrated into the plot: Manuel de Amat y Juniet , who was Viceroy of Peru from 1761 to 1775, and his mistress, the actress and singer La Perricholi , whose real name was Micaela Villegas (1748-1819) . Jacques Offenbach made her the title heroine of his operetta La Périchole . Both Merimée and Wilder used the bridge over the Río Apurímac built by the Incas around 1350 as a model .
In the book there are the Marquesa, Pepita, Esteban, Uncle Pio and Jaime, Micaela's son, on the bridge when it collapsed in 1714 (!). The beautiful Camila Perichole, as she is called in the book, fell ill with smallpox and, disfigured by scars, withdrew to the mountains. Uncle Pio, who wanted to bring Camila's son to his mother, was on the bridge with the child when it collapsed. Jaime was one of the three children Camila had with the viceroy.
Brother Juniper spent years gathering facts by talking to family members and friends of the victims and making notes. He then summarized his results in a book. Juniper's doubts about the omnipotence of the Catholic Church and the Kingdom were also fatal. The Inquisition condemned him as a heretic who was burned at the stake along with all of his writings, except for one that was overlooked. On the last pages of the novel, we also learn that Camila was returning to Lima to support the abbess and that Doña María's daughter Clara also visited the abbess. It is then also Clara who speaks the lines often quoted at the end of the novel: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge between them is love - the only thing that lasts, the only meaning."
Publication, success
The film was released on December 22nd, 2004 in Spain, where it grossed around 1.2 million euros in cinemas under the title El puente de San Luis Rey ; The French cinemas followed on May 25, 2005, where the title was Le pont du roi Saint-Louis . In the USA, the film was shown under the title The Bridge of San Luis Rey in five cinemas in June 2005, in which it grossed approximately 43,000 US dollars. The film was also shown in cinemas in Greece, Hungary and Portugal in 2005. It was released on DVD in the Netherlands in 2005. The film was released in Mexico in February 2007 and had its television premiere in Argentina in April 2007. A publication followed in Venezuela in 2008 and in Peru in 2010. The film was also released in Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Lithuania, Romania and Russia.
In Germany he was not seen in the cinema, a DVD release with a German soundtrack took place for the first time on September 9, 2013 under the title Die Brücke von San Luis Rey , provider KSM GmbH.
reception
criticism
Jonathan Holland criticized the "wooden" script in Variety magazine on January 17, 2005, with "uneven pace", which offered the "outstanding" cast few opportunities. It consists of a collection of "only sometimes attractive" scenes that have little emotional appeal. The cast - with the exception of Kathy Bates and Harvey Keitel - looked like they were "sleepwalking".
Frank Scheck wrote in The Hollywood Reporter on June 9, 2005 that the film was visually "lush", but dramaturgically "confused and confusing". It seems like a “sleepy costume drama” with numerous misplaced stars.
Desson Thomson scoffed in the Washington Post on June 9, 2005 that he was moved by the novel, but after seeing the film he only moved when he jumped up from his seat. The director has “pumped” a lot of “creative energy” into the characters, but she doesn't bring any of them to life. The representations are not convincing, they are fraught with the usual problems that arise when stars played smaller roles. De Niro tries not to sound like a mafia godfather, Keitel struggles with similar problems.
The lexicon of international films saw things differently and was of the opinion: "While the framework around this process and thus the philosophical superstructure is only roughly outlined, the flashbacks are convincing, which sensitively portray different fates in the struggle for love and happiness thanks to strong actors."
KSM found that this was a "wonderful story based on the novel by Thornton Wilder" that was "masterfully" filmed with "a squad of great film stars like Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Kathy Bates, F. Murray Abraham and Geraldine Chaplin". Kino.de pointed out that the film had a lot of “Hollywood star power for an epic historical drama from European co-production” in this “richly endowed European historical drama”, in which American Oscar winner and character actor “brave against the somewhat flat script “Would allude. Conclusion: "Epic search for truth and the meaning of life in magnificent pictures, a DVD premiere with hit potential."
João Lopes asked for the Portuguese magazine cinema2000 what Robert De Niro, F. Murray Abraham or Kathy Bates were doing in the midst of such madness. Thornton Wilder's literary legacy has been reduced to the mediocrity of a television film, the fate of which could also have been a mini-series.
TimeOut completely panned the film and asked the question: why do good actors appear in bad films? Even more confusing is why so many good actors appear in the same bad movie. Mary McGuckian's film is an excruciating, complacent historical drama that gives plenty of time to reflect - for example, whether a free trip to Spain (where the film was set) got Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel to accept, whether Kathy Bates and Gabriel Byrne were eager to work with De Niro and Keitel, or whether they were all eager to contribute to a third-forgotten version of Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel after the 1929 and 1944 versions.
As with the vast majority of reviews, Julien van Alphen from the Dutch Cinemagazine was of the opinion that the roles had been cast with the wrong actors. It remains to be seen whether this is due to their earlier roles or to their voices, which would not fit at all. The whole thing turns out to be a big costume party, and the monotonous English language, interspersed with Spanish names here and there, also contributes to it. Admittedly there are beautiful costumes, but what do you get out of it if you don't have a nice story?
The criticism in the Spanish cineol was also devastating. The talk was of a bridge to boredom and drowsiness and of crossing a bridge that plunges into a river full of boredom. Above all, the well-known Robert De Niro was reprimanded: he interpreted his archbishop with the same facial expressions he always had; Likewise, Gabriel Byrne always has the same facial expression in this film and doesn't move a muscle. A more expressive performance was expected from Harvey Keitel, as well as from the inadequately playing F. Murray Abraham.
Award
The designer of the costumes, Yvonne Blake, was awarded the Goya Film Prize in 2005.
Web links
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey at Metacritic (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944) see screenplay info at TCM - Turner Classic Movies (English)
- ^ Filming locations for The Bridge of San Luis Rey in the IMDb, accessed November 11, 2007.
- ↑ Box office / business for The Bridge of San Luis Rey in the IMDb, accessed November 11, 2007.
- ↑ a b Martin Grzimek: A forgotten masterpiece see deutschlandfunk.de
- ^ Opening dates for The Bridge of San Luis Rey on IMDb, accessed November 11, 2007.
- ↑ The Bridge of San Luis Rey Fig. DVD case (in the picture: Robert de Niro, F. Murray Abraham, Pilar López de Ayala, Harvey Keitel) see verleihshop.de
- ↑ Jonathan Holland: The Bridge of San Luis Rey In: Variety, January 11, 2005 (English). Retrieved March 1, 2019.
- ↑ Frank Scheck: The Bridge of San Luis Rey ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: The Hollywood Reporter , June 9, 2005. Retrieved November 11, 2007.
- ↑ Desson Thomson: The Bridge of San Luis Rey In: The Washington Post, June 9, 2005 (English). Retrieved November 11, 2007.
- ↑ The Bridge of San Luis Rey. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 1, 2019 .
- ↑ The Bridge of San Luis Rey see kino.de (including film trailer in German and 102 film images). Retrieved March 1, 2019.
- ↑ João Lopes: A Ponte de São Luís Rei see cinema2000.pt (Portuguese). Retrieved March 1, 2019.
- ↑ The Bridge of San Luis Rey see timeout.com (English). Retrieved March 1, 2019.
- ↑ Julien van Alphen: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2004) see cinemagazine.nl (Dutch). Retrieved March 1, 2019.
- ↑ El Puente de San Luis Rey - "Puente al tedio y el sopor" see cineol.net (Spanish). Retrieved March 1, 2019.
